


The Deadliest Weapon

by birdsandivory



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Background Relationships, Eventual Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Gentle Sex, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Memory Loss, Panic Attacks, Past Character Death, Pining, Slow Burn, Terminal Illnesses, dimitri and edelgard are siblings, lots of fluff but it's a little prickly bc this is felix we're talking about, there are hints of claurenz as well as the ones tagged
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29433411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsandivory/pseuds/birdsandivory
Summary: Felix sweeps into his life like a dream come true.Or, at least, that’s what he thought that first night.In which Felix is battling a lifelong illness and Dimitri finds that the more he unravels his secrets, the more he falls in love—and the easier it is to become angry at the world.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Dedue Molinaro, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Hilda Valentine Goneril, Hilda Valentine Goneril/Dedue Molinaro, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: The Three Houses AU Bang





	The Deadliest Weapon

**Author's Note:**

> we're finally here!!!
> 
> i'm so excited to present to you all the first chapter of my fe3h au bang fic! it's been a long time coming and i've been stressing over this thing for ages, so i'm happy to finally set it free into the world. i love dimilix so much and i really wanted to highlight all the best parts of their relationship while also discussing difficult topics like hard truths and suffering in silence, and i just hope that my all my love and care for dimitri and felix come across strong while you're reading. 
> 
> i just want to quickly thank my wonderful big bang partner, [kay](https://twitter.com/kayisdreaming), for creating [THIS](https://twitter.com/kayisdreaming/status/1362243603464998914) beautiful art for chapter one and for also taking on the task of beta-reading for me. and a big thank you to [manda](https://twitter.com/amirah_leigh) for giving me her lovely advice and support. i appreciate you guys so much!
> 
> now, without further ado...

He blows into Dimitri’s life like a dream come true.

.

.

Sort of. 

The first time Dimitri sees him is at daybreak. 

He’s woken initially by a single stream of light peeking from between the silk curtains of his room. The sun’s just barely lifted above the horizon, and when he pulls himself out of bed and peeks into the courtyard from his second-floor window, the world is that foggy filter of dawn that makes him feel like he’s in a dream. But that might be because can barely focus, the scar over his right eye waxy and tight as he rubs over it. 

Not that doing so will help much. He can’t see anything out of it anyway. 

What he can see, once he pushes his messy bangs from his face, is a flurry of dance-like movements that sweep across the fresh-cut grass. 

Dimitri’s gaze follows a blurry figure from between his lashes (a man his age, he thinks, another student—perhaps), watching as he whips his body along the shadows beneath the trees and across the patio, two wooden sticks extending from both of his hands. Every motion made is honed and precise, the rods cutting through the air sharply with the unpredictable extension and withdrawal of his arms—it looks as though he’s practicing some form of martial arts. 

Dimitri isn’t familiar with any discipline of the sort, but he finds himself entranced by the way the stranger’s body moves. 

He lets himself be swept away. And it’s almost as if Dimitri’s caught in the midst of a raging typhoon, the whirlwind of the man’s arms pulling him in. With little tact, he pops the lock on the window, lifting it slowly despite feeling like he’ll be noticed any second. 

It’s a miracle when he isn’t; his reward for that is being allowed to lean forward just a bit, attracted like an onlooker to a street performer.

He’s nearly bent over the sill when his alarm blares, lucky that he’s weighty enough to keep himself from falling forward when he jumps at the sound. 

Dimitri retreats into his room, closes the curtains as if slamming doors.

He forgets about the stranger as he brushes his teeth and combs his hair, dressing neatly and making sure he’s got all of his textbooks together in his bag before leaving his apartment-style dorm with time to spare (after finally remembering to close the window he left open). Dimitri clicks through missed texts and emails on the elevator ride to the first floor, waves at everyone he passes through the main lobby with a smile, and it’s almost like every other university day; he doesn’t miss a beat.

Only, he does.

When he steps out of The Dominic, the stranger is still there, and by some unknown force, Dimitri is rooted to the concrete beneath him. 

It’s still fairly early in the morning, and despite there being students milling about the dorm-houses as they slowly wake from slumber, none of them have stepped one foot beyond their front doors. It’s just the two of them; a squall of limbs and perfectly timed movements—

And Dimitri, intruding on what feels like a private moment, unable to look away from his spot on the sidewalk because this man is not just a passing spectacle.

He is also beautiful.

Dimitri hadn’t been expecting it—a face quite like that. It’s angular and pale, eyes carving their way through his skin like coppery-gold beacons in the fog. His lips are pressed into a thin line, brows furrowed deep, but there’s something astonishingly powerful in his expression. 

He’s a startling kind of beauty. Something out of dreams or legends that romanticize the idea of attraction being deadly. And that’s something Dimitri swears must be true, because when he changes direction suddenly, Dimitri’s heart begins hammering dangerously hard in his chest at the thought of getting caught staring. 

He watches from the sidewalk for Goddess knows how long, trying to make sense of the swaying trees in the quiet hours of morning when there is no wind; of slashes like lightning slicing through nothing but somehow still striking his lungs and stealing his breath. 

The faint sound of wood whipping through the air stops, and the moment is broken instantly, as if time only stood still because those hard-gripping hands kept moving. 

Dimitri turns away before he’s seen. 

Without looking back, he heads in the opposite direction of the dorm-houses. He has to get to class, he tells himself. Not because of the strange sensation in his chest and the urge to watch until, perhaps, he _does_ get caught. 

But because it wouldn’t do well to be late to practicum.

* * *

Practicum goes by slowly, but that might be because Dimitri’s mind is occupied by all the wrong things. Even when Dedue’s hand falls to his shoulder and Ingrid from his Tuesday evening seminar takes her seat beside him for intermission, Dimitri can’t for the life of him escape six a.m. that morning. Professor von Hrym’s lecture hums into his ears and he slides his pen across paper, but for the better part of the hour, he remains in a daze.

“You seem distracted today,” Dedue observes, and Dimitri can tell he’s concerned.

“Oh, no, I’m alright,” he’s quick to assure, voice soft and pleasant, laughing lightly when he’s fixed with a look. “It’s nothing—you worry too much.”

“You haven’t written any lecture notes beyond the first topic.” The unspoken _‘that isn’t like you’_ isn’t lost on Dimitri, and when he catches Dedue’s gaze with his own, he gives into the silent inquiry.

“It’s silly, really,” Dimitri huffs out.

“Go on.”

“I saw someone,” he answers simply. “This morning—outside my dorm—practicing some sort of martial arts.”

“That’s Felix,” Ingrid chimes in suddenly, setting down her highlighter. The notebook page in front of her is more yellow than black. “Outside The Bartel, right?”

“Yes, actually. He was waving a pair of wooden sticks across the patio.”

“That’s him.” 

“I see,” Dimitri says, trying not to seem overly excited about putting a name to the face.

_Felix!_

Dated, Dimitri thinks, but somehow it suits him. 

His mind wanders with the addition of new information, a single combination of two syllables floating in his mind like rain clouds. The drops that fall gather like dew on glass, trickling pleasant thoughts all the way down the panes. 

Felix’s name will forever remind him of that morning.

Thinking of black hair, diamond-cut corners of prettily slanted eyes, and a pinched mouth, Dimitri doesn’t bother opening his notebook for the rest of class. 

* * *

  
  
  


Later that night, Felix is there, diligently training.

Dimitri watches him from his window, wondering if he ever stopped, wondering how he has the energy to sweat so much in one day. But Felix looks noticeably angry this time. And Dimitri knows anyone is capable of anything when they’re angry.

His maneuvers are swift, but not quite as fluid as they were that morning. Felix’s body looks like an unleashed wave, swinging forward and carving through the air without rhyme or reason, no longer on what Dimitri would assume is his routine path. There are even moments when he skids his shoe, catches on the edge of the patio and drops one of his sticks only to growl loud enough to be heard, to swipe it from the ground and pick up where he left off. 

It’s sometime after nine-thirty that Felix calls it quits, shoving his sticks under his arms and stalking into The Bartel, slamming the door behind him. 

Dimitri recognizes that particular dorm-house as the one Sylvain had moved into earlier that week, funnily enough. As he closes his window, dims the lights, he wonders if Sylvain might know Felix—but he lets the thought die before it can grow. He doesn’t need to feed into idle curiosity like that.

But that doesn’t mean Dimitri doesn’t hope Felix will be there practicing in the morning when he wakes up.

Suffice to say, it gives him something to look forward to. 

When six a.m. does arrive and he climbs out of bed and opens the curtains, it’s with the expectation that he might hear the cutting whip of Felix’s arms, that Felix might be treading across the grass like a well-trained warrior sharpening his skills.

After a quick glance down at the patio, Dimitri exhales a disappointed sigh—closes the curtain on Felix’s show. 

He isn’t anywhere to be seen.

  
  


—0—0—0—

  
  


Felix’s hair is much longer than he expected it to be.

That’s his only thought when they meet face to face for the first time.

It’s purely by coincidence; on a sunny afternoon some time after class ends as he makes his way over to The Bartel. Sylvain had moved into the apartments much later than the rest of them and still hadn’t properly settled in after sitting on his packed boxes for the last two weeks, so Dimitri had offered to come and help him unpack along with a handful of his friends. 

Of course, knowing him as long as Dimitri has—the type of company he tends to keep—he doesn’t anticipate that they’ll get much work done. He’s debating whether or not he should give him the benefit of the doubt (something about people maturing over the years and how that certainly must’ve happened to Sylvain) when he finally reaches The Bartel’s flowery patio. It’s an amusing thought that proves fleeting the moment he becomes aware that someone else is there.

Standing in the middle of the walkway is Felix. 

He’s turned with his back toward Dimitri, having not yet noticed him, with those same wooden sticks in his hands as always. But that’s not what Dimitri fixates on. Eskrima, as Ingrid’s told him, piques his interest in the early hours of the morning and, on some days, late into the evening when Felix is outside Dimitri’s window; he’s seen it before. 

It’s the long, pin-thin strands that fall down Felix’s back that command his attention.

His hair lies beautifully, silky looking—shiny—flowing down to just barely touch the small of his back. A few strands get caught in the wind, but most remain heavy, unmoving, making it seem remarkably thick. Dimitri thinks it must feel nice, too, to card fingers through it, to carry its weight the way Felix does as he twists it into a bun—secures it to his head, tucks his fringe into the pulled back locks, as though he’s getting ready to swing again.

Only, as he does, he catches Dimitri watching him from the periphery—arm extended to make his move. 

“Can I help you?” Felix asks, the gravely rasp of his voice unexpected. 

Dimitri smiles sheepishly. “My apologies, I hadn’t meant to stare,” he says quickly, directing his gaze toward Felix’s pale hand. Gesturing at the rod it's wrapped around, he tries his hand at small-talk. “What are you training for?”

“Why do you care?” Felix drops his arm, sticks clacking together as he shoves them both into one hand before looking Dimitri’s way. 

He stops cold mid-turn.

Felix’s expression indecisively flits through a reel of emotions before he fixes Dimitri with an indecipherable stare. It goes on for minutes it feels like, and the weight of it makes Dimitri falter almost as much as it makes his heart pound.

He’s even more beautiful up close—though that might not be the most appropriate thought for the occasion.

Dimitri tries not to stare at the details—his pointed nose, the curve of his frown—for longer than necessary, focusing instead on his eyes. They’re just as much a distraction as the rest of him. 

“Dimitri,” he introduces himself politely instead, offering his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Felix’s lips twist, glaring down at Dimitri's hand until they settle into a sneer. Those penetrating eyes flicker back up at him. “Are you serious?”

“Well, I—”

“Hey now.” Sylvain’s beaming grin appears out of his dorm, the reading glasses on his nose being shoved messily into his hair as he drops a hand onto Felix’s shoulder. Felix actually _growls._ “Baring fangs already, Fe? He just got here.” 

He wags his brows at Dimitri, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out if that’s supposed to mean anything. 

“Sorry ‘bout this guy,” he apologizes half-heartedly.

“It’s alright, really. I’m the one who started asking questions out of nowhere.”

Felix shrugs off Sylvain’s hand, and Dimitri watches him shove his wooden sticks into a backpack on the ground before slinging it over his shoulder. He heads for the sidewalk without a single glance back, and Sylvain looks mildly offended.

“Where are you going?” Sylvain takes a step forward, and then two, spreading his arms out with an obnoxious whine. “Hilda and Claude haven’t even shown yet.”

“Sounds like you have plenty of people to help you unpack then.”

“Come on, be polite for once. Dimitri’s here—he’s the one I told you about!” Letting his arms drop and slap against his legs, Sylvain follows him to the sidewalk, talking with his hands. “Don’t you wanna hang out with an old friend of a friend? Be one of the cool kids?”

“I’m _not_ sticking around, Sylvain. I have better things to do,” Felix retorts, throwing a frown over his shoulder. “Have fun with your cool kids.”

“Jeez, Fe, really?” Sylvain cups his hands around his mouth. “Really?!”

Dimitri stares after Felix, not sure that introduction could have gone any worse. He’s almost sure he hadn’t said anything offensive, but he can’t shake the feeling that Felix’s departure has something to do with him.

“Well, I guess it’s just you and me for now.” Sylvain turns to Dimitri with a shrug before heading right back from whence he came and kicking open the dorm-house door. “Want the grand tour?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Dimitri answers without missing a beat, chancing one last look at Felix’s back before turning to Sylvain and putting on a less-than-sincere smile. “I’ve heard The Bartel is one of the higher-end dorm-houses. I’m a little curious about the amenities.”

That much is partly true. Dimitri can’t afford much in terms of luxury housing, even with the money his father left behind after his passing. Most of it goes toward therapists, medical bills, and his basic schooling. Not that it bothers him; so long as he has the basic necessities. He’s just fine, and still more fortunate than most.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to indulge Sylvain’s desire to show him all of the stops his parents’ money can buy.

“Oho- _ho,_ ” Sylvain grins, a wicked glint in his eyes as he ushers Dimitri inside. “Wait ‘til you see the _basement._ ”

“I can’t even begin to fathom what you mean by that.”

“Ever seen four guys use a water heater to turn a kiddie pool into a hot tub?” Sylvain nudges Dimitri’s arm with an elbow. “The first time was a huge success, we even got Felix—”

Sylvain falls into a thoughtful silence, tilting his head as he bites at the inside of his cheek.

“Hey, you know, sorry about Felix, dude,” he says all of a sudden, reaching up to ruffle Dimitri’s short locks. “I just feel like I should let you know that he just gets like that. Don’t let him make you feel bad.”

Dimitri smiles sardonically. “I’m almost convinced he hated me on sight.” 

“You and everyone else,” Sylvain jokes, but the grin on his face slips into something a little more sympathetic. “He really is a good guy deep down. Just a little”—he shrugs— “touchy.”

“I’ve noticed,” Dimitri sighs. “It’s alright. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

“Yeah. Give him a chance—you’ll see.” 

* * *

Surprisingly—and thankfully—Sylvain doesn’t take him to the basement when the tour officially commences. 

Instead, Dimitri’s brought into a large living area, heavily decorated with framed posters and fully furnished with couches and green-blue bean bag chairs. There’s quite the entertainment system hooked up to the mounted television, controllers and wires of all sorts spread about the place; along with piles of books and jackets slung over the arms of the sofas. A relatively normal sight befitting of a university dorm.

Despite being a little messy, Dimitri thinks it has a homey feel to it.

“Nice place.” 

“Right?” Sylvain agrees, delighted. He circles the room, pointing at the surrounding doors one by one, each decorated with more personality than the last. “This is Linhardt’s, that’s Caspar’s—Claude’s is that corner door—and this...” Pausing in front of the final bedroom door, Sylvain grins, grabbing the knob and opening it in a flourish. “This is mine.”

Dimitri takes a look inside. “It’s empty.”

“I’ve unpacked literally nothing.”

“We have our work cut out for us, then,” Dimitri sighs, gaze flickering over to a stack of boxes in the corner—few in comparison to the ones stacked along one of the common room walls—and a dirty, open toolbox right next to Sylvain’s unmade bed. He half-expects Sylvain to point out one more room before they begin, but he simply steps inside his own, looking around as if he’s trying to decide where he wants to start.

“Felix doesn’t live here?” Dimitri asks. When Sylvain looks over at him questioningly, he explains: “I see him out on the patio sometimes.”

“He commutes from home.” Sylvain shrugs. “Tried to get him to stay on campus, since it’s way more fun, but it just doesn’t interest him. You probably see him out there when he crashes on the couch.”

“Oh.” _That makes sense._ Felix does tend to show up sporadically, and if Dimitri thinks about it, a routine is not a routine without consistency. He and Sylvain must be close, if he stays over so often without actually living on campus. “How long have you known him for?”

“A while,” Sylvain shrugs. “I met him right after you left.”

“In middle school?”

“High school. He moved here sometime in the second semester my freshman year.”

“That soon?” Dimitri’s brows pinch, trying to remember that rough patch between moving away and reconnecting with Sylvain a handful of months later. “You never mentioned him in our talks.”

“Well, you and I never really talked about friends much, did we?”

Dimitri supposes he has a point. 

“So, I’m thinking...” Sylvain stretches his arms out in front of him, making a frame with his fingers and squinting one eye shut as he surveys the wall. He turns in place slowly, tongue poking out from between his lips as if he’s envisioning the finished product right then and there. It’s only when his finger frame zeroes in on Dimitri that he drops his hands, shoving them onto his hips instead. “Don’t just stand there, D. Until Claude and Hilda get here, you’re my box boy.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to have a little more shame when asking for unpaid favors,” Dimitri points out, amused. He walks over to the pile of boxes in the hall, looking over the labels with a hum. “Any I should start with?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Sylvain grins.

Dimitri goes for the first box he sees, picking it up and walking it over with ease. Sylvain looks down at the label, brows shooting up into his hairline.

“Jeez, you picked that up like it was nothing. There’s like forty books and a stack of photo frames in there,” Sylvain laughs, picking up a hammer from the toolbox and a couple of nails. “Workout much? Ladies love guys who lift.”

Dimitri’s cheeks color and he sets the box down without much fanfare. “Not particularly.”

“Doesn’t help that you’re also humble. You’re gonna pick them _all_ up, aren’t you?” Shaking his head, Sylvain sighs. “Then again, you sure are asking a lot of questions about Felix.” Tilting his head, he wags his brow with a grin. “Got a crush?”

“I can’t say I’m not interested in him, but it’s not like that,” Dimitri says, ignoring Sylvain’s ‘uh huh’ look. “I mean, he just seems like an interesting person.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.” Sylvain’s tongue pokes through his lips as he hammers a nail into the wall—something Dimitri knows he shouldn’t be doing. “Personally, I think you’d have an easier time wooing _Lorenz Hellman Gloucester,_ ” he says, air-quoting with his fingers. “Esteemed Head of GMU’s Student Government.”

Sylvain grabs for a framed black and white photo of world-famous playboy bunny Manuela Casagranda and shamelessly hangs it up just so.

Dimitri looks on unimpressed. 

“On second thought,”—Sylvain turns to him suddenly, waving a hand—“don’t. Claude wouldn’t be very happy with you if you succeeded.”

  
  


—0—0—0—

  
  


Dimitri thinks he understands exactly what Sylvain means when he says Claude is head-over-heels for Lorenz.

At first, he thought it might’ve been some kind of joke after hearing Claude complain about how stuck-up he is: a prissy, high-end-only pretty boy who thinks he’s leagues above the rest. 

Lorenz to Dimitri, from what he’s heard, seems petty and unapproachable, someone who can’t work with anyone but themselves. Who thinks nothing is good enough unless he’s the one who’s done it. Opinionated and full of judgement, his high-level sophistication matched only by his self-absorption. 

The thought of Sylvain’s words having any truth to them at all often had Dimitri scratching his head.

But, after paying closer attention to Claude’s complaints, he notices that Lorenz’s downfalls are often listed with a smile. A bit of good to carry the bad so it always breaks even, and it took him awhile to realize it, but...

Those are all things Claude actually _likes_ about him.

And Dimitri begins to see Lorenz in a much different way. 

He’s high-end because he can afford it, he’s above the rest because he works hard, and nothing is good enough because he is constantly trying to maintain his image. When Lorenz is “opinionated and judgemental”, he is also capable of backing his claims with triple-checked facts. And though he’s conceited, that doesn’t mean his heart isn’t in the right place. He pats himself on the back just in case no one else will, a sure sign of his strong resolve and independence.

It makes him wonder if he’ll ever find Felix’s ways endearing like that. 

“Why’s _he_ here?” Dimitri hears him whisper when he drops into the seat next to Hilda, her hands clapping together at his arrival—or, more likely, the arrival of his textbook and class notes. Claude and Felix are seated across from them at a large study table in the middle of the library, the entire group coming together for a study session Sylvain had scheduled earlier in the week.

“Uh, because I invited him?” Sylvain answers Felix with a cheeky grin, crossing his arms over his chest and tipping his chair dangerously far back on its hind legs. Felix frowns and the chair drops forward on all-fours with a loud _clack._ “Chill out, man. I promise Dimitri’s harmless.”

It’s always like this now—almost routine, it seems. 

Ever since the day he’d helped Sylvain unpack boxes, Dimitri has had the unpleasant realization that Sylvain was wrong about the way Felix felt about him. They don’t speak much, though not without some effort on Dimitri’s part; Felix is difficult to share a conversation with all on his own. And there aren’t many times that they’re even in the same room together. But Dimitri can’t shake the distinct feeling that Felix doesn’t like him at all.

And he can’t say it’s especially nice that he feels so unwanted.

Still, he tries not to take offense to the things Felix says about him and focuses on studying instead. 

Dimitri pulls one of his many textbooks from his bag and hands it to Hilda, who thanks him profusely as she dumps out a pile of pink gel pens from her pencil pouch, before flipping through one of his notebooks. Idle chatter starts up immediately, and he can only really study for about thirty minutes before the conversation sweeps him in, too.

“There’s a theory out there stating that the person you relentlessly pick on will one day be your mackin' buddy.” 

Hilda rolls her eyes. “I don’t believe you—at all.” 

“I’m telling you, Lorenz is into me, too,” Claude shrugs.

“Not for long,” she says, finally opening Dimitri’s textbook to the page he marked with a post-it for her. “You keep setting him off—not exactly charming of you, Claude.”

“Hey, sometimes I’m just rarin’ for a little confrontation.”

“We should spar sometime, then,” Felix suggests, clearly tired of the subject and dying for a change. “You’ve studied martial arts, haven’t you?”

“Very briefly. When I was eight.” Claude winks, and Felix rolls his eyes. “I just can’t really see myself waving sticks around like you do, you know? I’d rather work my brain.”

“Fine by me,” Felix shrugs, lips tugging upward. “I bet I can take you in a round of Go.”

“Brains _and_ brawn. Now that’s a worldly man, right there.” Eyes dancing with laughter, Claude nudges Felix’s side, clearly enjoying the back-and-forth. “Play Go with me and I promise I’ll beat you with your own sticks later.”

“I certainly would like to see someone try and beat you at Go,” Dimitri chimes in, amused with their conversation. “I thought I was pretty good at it, but you always capture me in less than ten turns—”

Felix silences him with a sharp look. “Can’t you see we’re having a conversation here?”

Claude’s smile never leaves his face, but Dimitri can see it thin out at its corners. “Hey, relax, Fe-Fe—no one said he couldn’t join in.” 

“Yeah, Fe.” A ‘thump’ sounds from beneath the table, and Felix shoots Sylvain a glare. “We’re all friends here.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Please, make it more obvious that you dislike me,” Dimitri cuts in dryly.

Felix scowls. “What’s your problem?”

“What’s _your_ problem, Felix?” Hilda bites back, no longer content to wallflower in the background. “You realize he’s done nothing to you, right? You don’t have to like everyone, but that doesn’t give you the right to be a dick, you know.” 

“I have the right to leave,” he hisses defiantly.

“Go ahead. No one wants to deal with your attitude anyway.” 

Felix’s chair screeches as he pushes himself up from the table, shoving his books haphazardly into his bag, bending pages without a care in the world before he throws it over his shoulder and marches for the west exit. 

Dimitri stands, intent on following after him.

“You don’t have to do that, D,” Sylvain insists, tossing a dismissive wave at Felix’s retreating back. “He’ll cool off eventually.”

“It’s fine. I should probably speak with him about this.”

Dimitri doesn’t take the advice, even though it's given for free and in abundance his entire way out of the library. He follows Felix into a narrow, ornate hall instead, one that leads to the back exit. 

“Felix!” 

His call goes ignored, the only reaction he gets from Felix being the glower he fixes Dimitri with when he jogs past two datedly-decorated rooms and falls into step beside him.

“Please, will you talk to me for just a second?” Dimitri pleads, though that somehow puts more distance between them. “Felix—”

“About what? There’s _nothing_ to talk about.” Felix snaps, stomping his way down the hall, refusing to look back. 

“I think there is.” Dimitri keeps up with him easily, brows pinching and lips curling into a frown. It’s astonishing how Felix makes him feel like he’s done him something of an injustice after knowing each other for less than three weeks and only speaking barely a handful of times. “Like the fact that you haven’t said a nice word to me since I met you.”

“What? You think I have to be nice to you just because you’re Sylvain’s buddy?”

“Usually when people meet for the first time, they’re at least civil, yes.” Dimitri shakes his head, sighing at how exhausting this already feels. “I’m not here to start an argument with you, Felix. I’d just like us to be friends.”

“Don’t you get it?” Felix stops at the door at the end of the hall and whips around, the look in his eyes freezing Dimitri in place with how wildly striking they are. How angry and fiery and _red_ they appear when they flicker up to look at him. 

“Felix—”

“I don’t _want_ to be your friend,” he spits out, and if Dimitri could taste those words on his tongue, he’d find them dark and bitter. Felix must feel just the same, falling back and swallowing thickly around what he says next. 

“I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Felix is gone in an instant. Out the door before Dimitri could bring himself out of his confusion long enough to say anything back. 

He’s not sure what he could’ve said to potentially “fix” whatever’s broken anyhow. For reasons Dimitri can’t begin to fathom, Felix seems to hate him, and no matter of logic feels like it would be enough to change that. 

Was it something he’d said that first day they met? Had Felix caught him staring from the window mornings before that?

If so, Dimitri would readily apologize a hundred times over.

But that doesn’t feel right.

Nobody asks about how their conversation went when Dimitri gets back to the table, only smiling up at him sympathetically as if they already know. An entirely new conversation topic is being passed around now, something about joining clubs and a party being hosted by Dorothea—a rather popular musical theatre student—later that weekend. 

Dimitri only half-listens, not really having much to contribute to the conversation other than a few words and a half-hearted smile. And when they break for the night, barely any studying having been done, Dimitri’s mind washes them away entirely, thinking solely of Felix.

Normally, Dimitri wouldn’t care if someone disliked him. Though it’s often not the case, he can handle it. This, however, isn’t the same as someone having a lack of preference for his personality. It feels deeper than that; the product of reasons he can’t seem to pinpoint, like the tip of an iceberg that only grows greater in size as it's submerged in the depths of the ocean.

Like Felix knowing something he doesn’t. 

It bothers him.

Dimitri drops his bag of books onto the floor as soon as he steps into his little apartment, thankful for the privacy of living by himself since the student who was supposed to occupy the room opposite his own never showed. 

Since then, no one has been assigned to that particular dorm. Dimitri hopes it stays that way.

He goes through his nightly routine methodically and unthinkingly, trying to keep those hateful words Felix spat at him out of his head. They go beyond Dimitri’s understanding and reason; he shouldn’t think about them at all. 

The more he does, the crazier they’ll drive him. That’s the formula his mind follows.

But, sometimes, he just can’t help it.

Felix is practicing outside on the patio when Dimitri passes by his window on the way to bed. He shuts his curtains and falls heavily into his blankets and pillows, only half as distressed as he was just hours before. 

_Nothing to do with me,_ Dimitri thinks, smiling wryly to himself.

  
  


—0—0—0—

  
  


“Do you remember that day?” It’s that same monotonous, manufactured tone he’s endured for months now. “The day of the incident?”

 _‘The incident’,_ Dimitri thinks bitterly. 

Once upon a time, it was called ‘the accident’—before his younger self had gone mad at the thought that what had happened to him was merely an everyday occurrence that could happen to anyone _._ The therapist of then, Hanneman, had decidedly changed his referral of the most devastating seventeen seconds of his life to ‘the incident’. As if that were any different. As if the horror of that moment could be smoothed over as a mild inconvenience so long as you use a different synonym.

He knows better now, though; ‘the accident’ is how he _should_ refer to it, even though it’s probably closer to ‘disaster’ and side by side with ‘tragedy’ despite what everybody wants him to believe.

“Just bits and pieces,” he says honestly. “Sometimes thinking about it hurts.”

“But you are remembering,” his new therapist—Doctor Eisner—nods. She writes something down, the grating of her pen against the clipboard loud in the quiet of the room. “Are you alright with that?”

Dimitri lends the question some thought even though he already knows the answer. “Most days I think it would be better not to. I already know the end result, so what would it change?”

“It might help you recover other lost memories. Things from before the accident that you’ve forgotten,” she says. “Do you think those memories are important to remember?”

He smiles; the corners of his lips strain. “If they were, I wouldn’t have forgotten.”

The rest of Dimitri’s session goes on much like that; a slew of questions he doesn’t know the answer to, mental adjustments to someone entirely new probing for things he’s not sure are even there. Ever since he moved back to the city, it’s been difficult to balance it all—especially to his new therapist. He had just recently gotten used to Hanneman, it felt like, and Dimitri had been seeing him for years.

When he leaves the office, he doesn’t feel any better than he did walking in. For the most part, talking to someone about what he feels only grows the emptiness inside him, and behind a clipboard, scribbling with pen on paper, they have no idea how hard he has to work to fill himself back up again. 

Dimitri exits the lobby and heads straight into one of the waiting rooms of Leicester Memorial. 

He can’t stand it here, truthfully; can’t stand that his therapy office is between an emergency room and an intensive care unit. Hospitals are suffocating, an otherworld that’s weightless and crushing and full of death, not unlike the tremulous depths of the deep. He’s had enough of places like this, but it almost seems like destiny drags him back no matter how hard he tries to get away.

It’s difficult to recover when you’re drowning in the river Styx. 

Whatever spirits he has inside of him can never hope to rise to the top.

In fact, it almost pulls him down deep enough to drown out the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Dimitri hears them in time—by chance—before he can hide any deeper within himself, and looks up only when they come to a halt.

He spots Felix, standing still in the wide corridor just a few feet away. 

He’s staring right at Dimitri, looking somewhere between contemplation and bemusement, slanted copper searching him like maps for something— _for reasons and excuses, and maybe a way to escape, perhaps—_ just before their eyes meet. Felix has a way of communicating without words; he changes the air, like prickles on Dimitri’s skin or fire at the tips of his ears. Burns up his chest or shivers his spine with the cold. Or strikes him with lightning just by staring into his eyes like he’s wondering if Dimitri is going to automatically walk over and talk to him. 

“Felix?” And of course, Dimitri does, even if Felix doesn’t want anything to do with him. “Why are you here?”

Whatever fascination Felix holds for him disappears, replaced with that naturally disgruntled look he usually has on his face. “I’m visiting someone.”

“Oh.” Dimitri quells his curiosity instantly, because why would anyone ever be visiting someone at a hospital for a good reason? It doesn’t feel like it’s his place to ask about who Felix is visiting, and even if he thought he could, it’s not as though Felix tolerates him very much. “I hope they recover quickly,” is all he says, trying not to think so hard about the way Felix’s mouth presses together into a stubborn frown, eyes downcast.

“Right.”

It’s an awkward exchange, and Dimitri’s not sure if he can stand it. 

“I should get going now,” he insists, thinking that he shouldn’t overstay his welcome. “I’ll see you at school, Felix.”

“Wait.” 

It’s more in surprise than anything, that Dimitri looks back, if just to make sure Felix had said something to him at all. Felix refuses to look him in the eye—annoyed, huffy, conflicted—decidedly glaring at the bus pass hanging around his neck instead. And Dimitri has to remind himself to speak because, when Felix _does_ look at him, it feels like he’s seeing right through him. Like he can form a diagnosis himself and realize that he is better off staying as far away from Dimitri as he can. 

“Yes?”

After a long moment, Felix sighs.

“Look, I’m heading back to campus, too,” he says, lifting his keys to emphasize his point before. “Do you need a ride?”

Dimitri’s anxiousness rises, uncomfortably prickling beneath his skin, like it always does at the thought of riding in a car with someone else at the wheel. It’s almost completely cast aside by the surprise of Felix’s offer, however, and before he knows it, he finds himself waging war between refusing (and ruining a chance that may never come again) and sucking it up for a new opportunity. At least he has time before getting on the bus to pull himself together. He doubts Felix will let him have twenty minutes to get through the first hit of anxiety before he even gets into his car. 

But against his better judgement, Dimitri smiles gratefully.

“I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter.](https://twitter.com/birdsandivory)  
> [retweet.](https://twitter.com/birdsandivory/status/1362254109911433216)  
> [kay's art.](https://twitter.com/kayisdreaming/status/1362243603464998914)  
> [fe3h thread.](https://twitter.com/birdsandivory/status/1249699761286000643)  
>    
> thanks so much for checking out the first chapter of my angsty dimilix!
> 
> now, i just wanted to warn you all that this first chapter is a little rough, so i will be polishing it a bit before i update the next chapter. i was in a little bit of a bind due to my big bang posting date and i didn't have as much time as i would have liked to shine it up, so i'll be taking the liberty of doing that within the next two weeks or so. still, i hope you enjoyed this first installment and will stick around to see how the story unfolds!


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